Shailene Woodley Opens Up About Her Issues With Porn

She believes sexuality should go beyond that.

Shailene Woodley wearing a black turtleneck sweater while speaking onstage during TIME Women of the Year 2024
(Image credit: Getty Images)

Shailene Woodley has opened up about her relationship to her sexuality.

Appearing on the SheMD podcast with Mary Alice Haney and Dr. Thais Aliabadi, the actress discussed her new show Three Women, adapted from Lisa Taddeo's novel by the same title.

On the show, sexuality is a major theme, so the podcast hosts asked Woodley about her own.

She began by explaining that she takes issue with the way the U.S. approaches sexuality as opposed to Europe, where she lived for a while. For her, America sells a version of sex that is "fabricated" and "performance" as opposed to "true intimacy and vulnerability and connection."

#shailenewoodley Woodley on health battles, healing & escaping the performance act. Episode out now! - YouTube #shailenewoodley Woodley on health battles, healing & escaping the performance act. Episode out now! - YouTube
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"I'm a very sexual person. I always have been," Woodley said. "And I was very lucky in my life, as a person discovering myself and my body, to have a partner at the time who loved to dance. I always call it a dance.

"Sometimes the dance is a really fast tango and sometimes the dance is a really slow groove and sometimes it's loud and sometimes it's really soft. And I had somebody that helped me discover myself because there was a sense of comfortability together. And I think that I probably did the same for him."

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The Big Little Lies star expressed how she would love to change the way sexuality is taught.

"I wish in a way I could just do sex ed sometimes," she said.

"Not me personally, but go into sex ed curricula and go, 'Okay, how can we fix this and change it a little bit?'

"I was talking to somebody else about this yesterday, about how if people knew what was possible with sex, they would look at porn and go, 'Oh God, this is like junk food. Really? This is what we're being sold when all of these other things are possible with my body because I'm like a magic machine?'"

She continued, "Pleasure is so important, and we just rip each other off of it because I think we don't necessarily even know what's possible. And that's my big beef with porn, is I'm like, 'You're selling everybody McDonald's. When you could have like, whoa.'"

Three Women is out now on Starz and Hulu, and also stars Betty Gilpin, Gabrielle Creevy, and DeWanda Wise.

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Iris Goldsztajn
Morning Editor

Iris Goldsztajn is a London-based journalist, editor and author. She is the morning editor at Marie Claire, and her work has appeared in the likes of British Vogue, InStyle, Cosmopolitan, Refinery29 and SELF. Iris writes about everything from celebrity news and relationship advice to the pitfalls of diet culture and the joys of exercise. She has many opinions on Harry Styles, and can typically be found eating her body weight in cheap chocolate.